


See No Evil

by kalliel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Animal Transformation, Body Horror, Gen, Horror, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Season/Series 02, wing fic of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-15
Updated: 2010-04-15
Packaged: 2018-04-08 09:41:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4299957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalliel/pseuds/kalliel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>見猿　聞か猿　言わ猿 // A Japanese fairytale goes wrong, and Sam grows wings. If he's going to survive it, Dean's not allowed to touch, he's not allowed to look, and he's not allowed to help. This is going to go well.</p><p>Late S2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	See No Evil

見猿　聞か猿　言わ猿

_The shower doesn't help. It's cold (_ did you remember the gas bill? _cold), and his muscles writhe and tense under the battering stream. Striations hopelessly tangled and mismatched, like a knotted weave._

_Budding rocks at his shoulder blades._

 

\--

 

The slits start at the small of her back and run up through her shoulders. Perfect parallel. 

The cuts themselves are less exact. It's like her skin just _ripped_ ; muscles and bone just ate themselves to the surface, split her skin and turned her shoulders inside out. Her throat is a peacock's red and blue, beading at the angel-hair lacerations looped all around.

Tangled silk and wreaked feathers everywhere. Floor streaked with blood and fat and flesh. It flakes underfoot, where the thinnest film has dried already.

The Winchesters don't linger. They can deliberate in the living room. 

Sam closes his eyes, utters thin words. "We'll try again." 

"Three girls," Dean reminds him. "Three."

Sam nods in recognition, but that is all. Reclines against the coffee table. "Okay, so what have we got."

"Well, the _SFPD's_ got this file. Melissa Hang, nineteen. Lots of pictures, just in case you've got a mind for scrapbooking." But the comedic timing's off, and Dean knows it. He assumes a diagnostic, world-weary tone as he soundbytes the transcript. "One eyewitness, like the other two. Brother, this time. Bro comes home, hears screaming from the sister's bedroom. Time he gets there, she's strung and feathered."

Sam nods.

"And... Not even San Francisco's that whacked. So I'm thinking it's one of _our_ things," says Dean. Folds report and photographs back into the manila envelope. "Hey, you with me, Sam?"

Sam nods again. Looks down at his shoes. "Yeah--yeah. It's just... I don't feel that good right now."

Dean looks back at the slick, sinewed mess of nineteen-year old girl, just visible on the other side of the skewed door. "There's a bathroom down the hall. Left side," he offers. His voice is softer than before.

This time, Sam shakes his head. Shrugs. _I'm fine._

 

\--

 

_His fingers are cracked and bleeding, white with dryness even after the shower. The wind, he thinks._

_His fingers tingle._

_The bay wind._

_Everything tingles. He shudders, a white-hot ripple down his rock-shoulders down to his tailbone._

_It's like he's walking through spider webs, invisible under the shade of trees. The silk is everywhere. He bats it away, but he can feel it, still._

_Still, still, still. Just stand still-- _it can't touch you, then_._

_He can still feel it. The tips of his fingers pulse._

 

\--

 

Dean snaps his fingers. "I know that Sammy look. What've you got--shoot."

Sam sniffs. "Might be kind of a long shot, but I pulled up a Japanese legend that fits."

A hunter saves an injured crane. Soon after, he meets his true love; she weaves him tapestries of quality unparalleled, but only by night, under the light of moon.

"Are you telling me that in Japan, birds turn into hot chicks instead of hot chicks turning into werewolves?"

 _Don't come in_ , is her one rule. While I work, _don't come in._

Day by day, and piece by piece, she wanes. One day, when the moon is so dark, not even the reflective snow lights the night--

"Poetic."

"I didn't write this, Dean."

\--the hunter hears his true love weeping. _Don't come in_ , he thinks. The words are thick and wet in his mouth, and stick in his throat. _Don't come in._

He comes in.

He finds a crane, fragile white, streaked with thin ribbons of fluid red that pools beneath. In its beak are feathers, plucked from its own flesh. Placed in the loom to be weaved into fabric.

"She leaves, after that. She never comes back."

"So we've got three dead crane-girls, and three people who walked in on them doing...?"

They don't know. They don't know anything at all.

"Metropolitan area this size, I doubt a lot of people do a ton of exotic birdwatching." Dean curls down a finger on one hand, as he begins his long trek down a list of never-ending possibilities.

Sam sniffs, rolls his shoulders. Rolls them broodingly, as Dean says. "You can't rule that out; not without making sure. There's... seagulls, and pigeons and stuff. Parrots on Telegraph Hill?" Sam suggests uncertainly. 

It's Dean's turn to roll something--his eyes.

Sam is about to offer some semblance of logic when his cell rings. Instead, he says, "Detective Sambora."

 _Three girls,_ Dean mouths.

Sam's phone clicks shut. "Four."

 

\--

 

_Cold tile. The contact sends a spasm through his back, and he arches backward with a flexibility he's never before exercised. He kicks out, knocks the wire wastebasket on its side. Hits the base of the toilet with his knee._

_Everything starts coming down around him._

_Shower curtain, like a pale shroud. Mess of water and--_ smell it; is that blood? _and spiderwebs still, and wet down (_ I told you that needed to be dry-cleaned _wet down)._

_"Hey!" Some hollow sound, from far away. He thinks he can hear it through the tile, cold syllable carved from stone._

_There's a rush of air in his eyes, and it excites the silk and the down and the twitchy insect feeling all over_

__please  
help   
me __

_The door. It's coming from the other side of the door. Of course it is._ Don't come in. __

_"You good in there?"_

__Don't come in. __

_The door knob turns._

 

\--

 

"Three." Sam says, as he meets Dean on the steps. His expression of one of vague perplexity. "This one's a guy." There are more pictures. "Look--"

\--And Sam is interrupted by an explosion of seagulls, snapping and flapping all about as they try to swallow the photographs whole. "Jesus! What the fuck!"

Once the gulls have dispersed under Sam's onslaught, Dean speaks. "You may be right about the birds, Sammy. Didn't some baby get its nose eaten off by one of these?"

"Why that's funny to you, I don't know. Okay, look. Three, _and two._ " Two steaming piles of split, silk-choked meat. " _Look_ at these guys."

 

\--

 

_He does not know which is more exquisite. The jagged, fibrous cut of silk at his neck (rubs his skin raw as the threads grow heavy with blood and pull taut and tight), or the shock of his bones shattering like glass._

_Or perhaps his muscle, as it stretches, then snaps, then shreds._

 

\--

 

"Well, that widens our victim pool to...everyone in the fucking city. _Fan_ tastic. How're we gonna know what it's after?"

It's rhetorical, but Sam answers anyway. "We don't. We have to look for something else. We try to save the next victim, we'll never catch this thing." _We don't even know what 'this thing' is._

"Gold Star plan, Sam." Uncertainty laces Sam's name, interwoven with concern. Questioning. Sam doesn't respond immediately, and Dean waits. Probes.

"Yeah. That means people are going to keep dying." And that's the grim truth. _People die. It happens. Get over it._

 

\--

 

Don't come in.

 

_"Stay with me--hey, hey. Stay with me. Come on."_

_He feels hands all over. They feel like the spiders that spun the silk._

_Strong hands. They work at his shoulders in swift, urgent circles, trying to make putty of them. (Useless.)_

_He coughs when he inhales down. Sputters when the feathers catch in his constricted throat._

_He can feel the wings. He can feel the weight, and then pain, and the terrible ripping of his shoulders as he falters under their bulk. They're caught up in the spider silk strings--everywhere, everywhere. Too heavy, still._

_He_ sobs _, it hurts that much. And_ he _doesn't cry._ Why did you open the door? __

 _"Nonono. Hey, hey; you're gonna be okay. You're gonna be okay. We're gonna get you okay. Sam._ SAM."

 

Don't come in.

 

\--

 

Sam wakes up. He's laid like a crucifix on a table.

His back aches.

(And Dean rushes in.)


End file.
